Misfire
by decyfer
Summary: Lucy wants to learn how to shoot a gun. Danny is not amused. A series of short one-shots.
1. The Question

A/N: I hate to add a note here, but I've noticed that about a third of the people who look at this stop on this chapter and the next. Don't worry - they're only openers! The others are longer and hopefully more amusing. :)

Thank you for reading and have a wonderful day,

decyfer

* * *

"Dad, can I learn how to shoot a gun?"  
"No."


	2. The Question, Part II

"Da-ad!"  
"No."


	3. Poor Toby

"Mom, can I learn how to shoot a gun?"  
"Sure."  
"Yes!" Lucy began to dance around, scaring the cat, Toby, who was napping peacefully in the slight bit of sunshine coming into the New York apartment this late in the evening.  
"Lindsay!" Danny's voice whined down the hallway, picking up their conversation.  
Lindsay sighed at her husband, who she swore suffered from Convenient Hearing, and grinned at her daughter, who had picked up the poor feline and was dancing with him. "Oh, come on, Danny, let her have her fun."  
"With a gun? She'll shoot her eye out!"  
"Danny, this isn't a movie."  
"Flack shot Stella when he was a rookie! Lucy will probably end up shooting Toby—"  
"Flack is differen—wait, he did what now?!"  
Lucy, for her part, remained completely oblivious.


	4. Sleep Talking

A/N: Thank you for the reviews so far, even the... less kind ones. I appreciate the feedback all the same!

* * *

"You know what, fine, we'll teach her to shoot."  
"Yes!" Lindsay (and an eavesdropping Lucy) chorused.  
"Lucy! What are you doing back there?"  
"Sleeping?"  
"You're speaking to me—you're obviously not sleeping."  
"I'm… sleep… talking!"  
"You mean walking?"  
"No, I mean talking."  
Lindsay, the more easygoing parent, just rolled her eyes and smiled.


	5. Attack!

"Don't move, or I'll shoot!"  
Lucy's mouth dropped open and she relinquished one hand on the gun to scratch the back of her neck. The man who had just threatened her looked exasperated. "What are you doing? Don't take your hand off the gun!"  
Lucy rubbed her face. "I don't think this is working for me."  
Danny, for his part, looked crestfallen.  
Lindsay raised her eyebrows at her husband, who was dressed in all black and was brandishing a water pistol, trying to look frightening. "Why not, Luce?" she asked, trying valiantly not to laugh.  
Lucy was not amused. The teenager tilted her head to one side, regarded her own water gun, and covered her eyes with a hand. "Dad… you have a paper bag on your head. Who does that?"  
"Criminals!" Danny defended hotly.  
"Only the bad ones," Lindsay supplied helpfully.  
"Maybe I should have invested in the ski mask," Danny muttered.  
Lucy did her best to look sympathetic.


	6. The Picnic

"Oh, so now we've graduated to paintballs?" Lindsay asked as her husband came into the annual Central Park Police and Fire Department Picnic loaded with supplies.  
Danny hoisted the other large shopping bag into the air. "And protective wear!"  
Lindsay gave out a heavy sigh from where she had been chatting with Hawkes. "You do realize we can't actually have a paintball tournament in Central Park, right?"  
"You mean we can't shoot these things at the park?"  
"Danny, this is Central Park!"  
"So?"  
"Danny!"  
In the background, Mac raised an eyebrow and began to show a fascinated Lucy how to assemble and disassemble a gun.


	7. Career Day

"This is my dad," Lucy announced to a classroom of bored-looking students. "He shoots people."

Don (who had been taking a swig of an unfortunately non-alcoholic beverage) took the opportunity to do a spit take. Maybe attending Lucy's Career Day wasn't such a terrible waste of time after all.

"He... shoots people?" Lucy's poor teacher asked faintly, fanning herself with a stack of ungraded papers.

Danny sputtered. "I'm a _police detective_!"

Twenty-six pairs of eyes stared up at him. Danny fidgeted, while Don only snorted. Lucy looked at him as if only just noticing his presence.

"Oh. And this is my uncle, Don. He arrests the people my dad shoots."

"Hey!" Don protested hotly. "I shoot people too!"

Finally, a response. "Really? How many-"

"Okay," Lucy's teacher interrupted. "I think the... er, _detectives_... need to be going now."

Lucy waved at them as they were quickly escorted from the classroom.

"I'm going to kill her."

"No, you're not."

Danny deflated. "I know."


	8. The Spider, Part I

A/N: Inspired by the always-wonderful lily moonlight!

Many thanks to all of my readers and reviewers thus far! It means a lot to me that you take time out of your day to read and review.

Thank you all so very much,

decyfer

* * *

"A firearm is not something to be shot at just anything, Lucy," Danny warned.

He had (finally) taken Mac's advice (more like incessant prodding) and was at least showing his daughter how to safely handle a gun. Maybe that would get _someone_ off his back.

"Of course, you'll never fire one," he continued.

Lucy screamed.

Danny shrugged. "I'm sorry that this disappoints you, but it's for your own good, really..." he trailed off, squinting in the direction Lucy was staring.

Oh. _Oh_. Danny had spotted the problem. His eyes widened.

A large spider, bigger than one of Lucy's (albeit small) hands, sauntered across the close-cropped grass, looking pleased as punch.

Like it _owned _the place.

Pah!

Enter Danny Messer, Spider Hunter.

Like the Crocodile Hunter.

Only better!

...Maybe he should hop on something first, though.

That thing could eat him, after all.

Safely perched atop a stone bench, courtesy of Central Park, Danny considered the spider and came up with one option, and one option alone.

It was time to shoot himself a spider.

And so, with a practiced flourish, Danny took aim and fired.

...which might have caused mass hysteria.

Might have.

And the fact that two joggers had jumped into the lake?

A completely irrelevant occurrence!

...Right?

Right.


	9. The Spider, Part II

"You shot a spider." Lindsay said without preamble as she entered the break room, having spotted Danny having lunch at one of the tables.

Danny, who was in the midst of eating a handsomely sized sandwich, swallowed his bite, looking sick. "What do you mean?" he asked, hoping she wasn't going where he thought she was going.

"In Central Park," she continued.

"I'm not sure I know where-"

"With Lucy present."

Danny had a bad feeling about this. "Uh..."

"While teaching her about _gun_ _safety_?"

Danny cringed. She knew.

She knew everything.

She always _knew_! "Okay, I know this looks bad..."

"You inspired mass panic. Of course it's bad!"

"The spider was huge," Danny defended. "It was liable to eat Lucy!"

"Danny."

"An unsuspecting citizen, then?"

"Danny," Lindsay said again, more calmly. "Stella called."

"Oh," Danny smiled, relieved for the change of subject. "What did she want?"

"She _wanted _to recommend some excellent therapists."

"What? For Flack?"

"For you. For _you_, Danny!"

"Okay, that's a little drastic, don't you-"

"You shot a spider. In Central Park. _While teaching Lucy about gun safety_."

"We already went over that," Danny supplied helpfully.

"You weren't even going to tell me!"

He didn't even bother to deny it. "How did you find out about that, anyway?"

Lindsay groaned, ignoring him. "You were always the responsible parent, too."

"Me? The responsible parent?"

"You know... no boys, no guns, a good parental example," Lindsay clarified. "How did it all go wrong?"

"It didn't go wrong," Danny scoffed.

Lindsay blinked at him.

"Okay, it went wrong. But hey, I'm still planning on threatening any boys she brings home _with _a gun, so that's something."

"I'd tell you not to do it, but I have a feeling you wouldn't listen."

Danny shrugged.

She was right.

She was always right.

They sat in silence for a while, considering each other.

"You know you're going to have to teach her how to shoot eventually, right?"

Perhaps Lindsay wasn't right about everything, after all.

"Oh, no," Danny said seriously. "She'll never even touch a gun, as long as I'm around."

Lindsay sighed, dropping the subject, and squinted over Danny's shoulder out into the 34th floor. "Where is Lucy, anyway?"

Danny swiveled in his chair and looked around, seeing only Hawkes, who was (much too calmly) sipping a mug of presumably lukewarm coffee.

"Actually," Lindsay corrected, "where is _everyone?"_

The couple regarded each other and then the too-quiet lab with suspicion.

It hadn't been this quiet since the aftermath of the Secret Santa Debacle of 2021, which could mean only one thing:

Something was going down.

And it wasn't going to be good.

* * *

A/N: Lindsay isn't afraid of spiders... she did _eat _them in one episode, after all.

Let's all (and by all, I mean the arachnophobic population of the world) take Catty's review of The Spider, Part I to heart: "In fact shooting it probably wasn't enough. Doesn't Danny carry a portable kit with lots of post being shot spider dissolving chemicals?" (Yes... yes he does...!)

* * *

To be continued in our next segment, 'The Gun Range, Part I'

You'll have to make your own assumptions to what happens there.

At least until I post it, of course.

But seriously, thank you all for all the support you've given me on this story... it means a lot!


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